Everybody says German is so hard. My mother tongue is neither German nor English, but I've been mistaken for a native speaker of the latter at times. I don't think the GP realizes how much effort goes into perfecting English pronunciation, everything is so arbitrary what with words coming from Celtic, German and French/Latin origins. A written vowel means practically nothing in English, and if it's not the stress you might as well have written a schwa.

Memorizing genders in German is very easy with a mnemomic method. Learning it has frankly been a walk in the park, everything is orderly and put together in discernible components.